Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

MENTORS

Mentors are experienced entrepreneurs or investors who actively contribute time, energy, and wisdom to startups and can be a key part of a startup community.

Often the terms advisor and mentor are conflated. An advisor has an economic relationship with the company he is advising. In contrast, a mentor doesn’t. The mentor is helping startups without a clear set of outcome goals or economic rewards. I refer to this as a “give before you get” approach. Mentors are counting on their contribution of good karma coming back around at some point, in some way, without a predefined expectation.

For a mentor to be successful, there are a number of things to consider. At TechStars, we’ve created a mentor manifesto, which follows and explains many of the key behaviors of a mentor (http://startuprev.com/g2).

• Be Socratic.
• Expect nothing in return (you’ll be delighted with what you do get back).
• Be authentic/practice what you preach.
• Be direct. Tell the truth, however hard.
• Listen, too.
• The best mentor relationships eventually become two-way relationships.
• Be responsive.
• Adopt at least one company every single year. Experience counts.
• Clearly separate opinion from fact.
• Hold information in confidence.
• Clearly commit to mentor or do not. Either is fine.
• Know what you don’t know. Say, “I don’t know” when you don’t know. “I don’t know” is preferable to bravado.
• Guide, don’t control. Teams must make their own decisions. Guide but never tell them what to do. Understand that it’s their company, ...